The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [39]
“It’s Burt,” she said. “He’s on the other side of the gate. He’s retired, but he’s been called back for this.”
“You drive,” Robert said. “Lock the door after me. What’s his last name?”
“Sears.”
With one fluid motion, so swift it was over before it had registered, Robert stepped out of the car and slammed the door. Kathryn slid awkwardly over the gearshift into the driver’s seat and locked the door. She watched Robert put his hands into the pockets of his topcoat and shoulder his way through the reporters and cameramen. He yelled Burt Sears so loudly that everyone stopped for a moment to look at the man separating the crowd. Kathryn began to move the car forward into the vacuum Robert created as he walked.
What would happen, she wondered, if the wall of people in front of her simply refused to part?
She watched Robert unfasten the gate. Everywhere she glanced there were cameras, women in suits, men in brightly colored windbreakers, and still she inched forward, urged toward the gate by Robert’s insistent hand. She worried for a moment that the crowd might simply go with her, move with her to the house like a cortege — a grotesque cortege with the widow trapped inside the car, a beetle under glass. But an unwritten law, one she hadn’t known about and didn’t quite understand, halted the crowd behind the gate when it easily might have overwhelmed Burt and Robert. Once inside the gate, she stopped.
“Go,” Robert said, slipping into the passenger seat.
With shaking hands, she put the car in drive and began to inch forward.
“No, I mean move,” Robert said brusquely.
She had thought, when she first saw the throng in front of the gate, that her house would be a refuge if only Robert and she could reach it. But she quickly realized that that would not be the case. Four cars she hadn’t seen before were parked in the driveway, one haphazardly, with its door still open, a bell dinging from inside. Four cars meant at least that many strangers.
She turned off the engine.
“You don’t have to do this now,” he said.
“But I’ll have to do it sometime,” she said.
“Possibly.”
“Shouldn’t I have a lawyer?”
“The union’s taking care of it.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Just don’t give these guys any answers you’re not absolutely sure of.”
“I’m not sure of anything,” she said.
They were in her kitchen and in the front room, men in black uniforms and dark suits, Rita from yesterday in pale gray. A large man with oval wire-rimmed glasses and excessively gelled hair came forward to greet Kathryn first. His collar, she noticed, cut into his neck, and his face was flushed. He waddled somewhat, in the way of heavy men, leading with his stomach.
“Mrs. Lyons,” he said, holding out a hand. “Dick Somers.” She let him take her hand. His grip was tentative and damp. The phone rang, and she was glad Robert didn’t leave her to answer it.
“From?” Kathryn asked.
“I’m an investigator with the Safety Board. Let me say how very sorry I am, we all are, for your terrible loss.”
Kathryn could hear a low, steady male voice on a television in another room.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I know this is a difficult time for you and your daughter,” he added.
Her face must have registered wariness at the word daughter, for she saw him make a quick scan of her features.
“But I do have to ask you some questions,” he said.
There were Styrofoam coffee cups on the kitchen counter, and two bright pink Dunkin’ Donuts boxes on the table. Kathryn had a sudden and powerful craving for a donut, a plain donut dipped in hot coffee, disintegrating from the coffee as she brought it to her mouth. She remembered she hadn’t eaten anything for more than thirty-six hours.
“My colleague, Henry Boyd,” Somers said, introducing a younger